Overthinking – How to Cage the Monkey Mind

Overthinking can be like having an unwanted roommate running around inside your head – the incessant chitter chatter of the monkey mind.

First lets ask, how many thoughts does the average person have in a day?

Research has found that the average person has approximately 60,000 thoughts a day. What is more surprising, the same research found that 80% of them are negative and 95% are the same ones we had yesterday!

Whatever way you look at it, there is far too much negative repetitive thinking going on with too many of us every day.

No other life on this planet thinks like we do, or are conscious of time like we are.

Most of our thinking requires time, psychological time, the ability to recall yesterday to prepare for tomorrow. But it will only ever be NOW; the present moment.

We can never return to the past or travel to the future, but we can do by thinking about it, this is psychological time.

Depressive style of thinking, is thinking about the past because of built up anger, resentment, grief, guilt or shame. Anyone who suffers from anxiety has a perceived fear of the future.

If you are experiencing any problems in your life as you are reading this now, I almost guarantee that it will either involve something in the past or something in the future—our thinking problems need time—psychological time.

If you have a problem that needs dealt with now, deal with it now. But if you are at home thinking about problems at work, or at work thinking about problems at home, the only way we can keep these problems in your mind is to THINK about them.

No amount of ruminating about the past is going to change anything. The past is where it belongs. Learn, forgive, let go.

If you have to prepare for something in the future; then prepare. Worrying about potential problems is pointless if they are never actually going to happen, and robbing you of life’s joys that are happening now.

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain.

How then can we tame this monkey mind, how can we put him back in his cage and quieten the chatter and internal dialogue?

What many of us try to do is fix our thinking problems with the same level of thinking that created our thinking problems and that’s when we can end up digging a deeper and deeper whole for ourselves.

To put it another way, we try to use the Monkey to fix our thinking problems, when the Monkey IS the problem!

Our thinking mind makes a wonderful tool but a terrible master.

The best thing you can do is think less, do something else, anything. Don’t sit and dwell on things. Go for walk, go to the gym, read a book, visit or call a friend, anything to get your mind off it.

There are times when our mind naturally becomes quiet, for example;

You know when you are trying to solve a problem and the more you think about it, the further away answer becomes. Then after a night’s sleep when you first wake in the morning or when you’re in the shower and you have that aha moment, like a lightbulb moment and the answer is then there that you have been seeking for so long. This happens because of less thinking, not more.

When your mind is quiet there is then space for your innate wisdom, insight and intuition to shine through.

Things that work quickly to help quieten your thinking mind are; exercise, walking, meditation and hypnosis.

Through my coaching work I find myself helping children, teenagers and adults who are suffering from the effects of overthinking.

Overthinking can be at the root cause of depression, anxiety, stress, worrying or feeling insecure and self-conscious.

For more information on how I can help please contact me at the following: